Digital Image Processing

IMAGE ENHANCEMENT
(HISTOGRAM PROCESSING)
 Contents

Over the next few lectures we will look at image

enhancement techniques working in the spatial
domain:
 What is image enhancement?
 Different kinds of image enhancement
 Histogram processing
 Point processing
 Neighbourhood operations
 A Note About Grey Levels

So far when we have spoken about image grey level

values we have said they are in the range [0, 255]
 Where 0 is black and 255 is white
There is no reason why we have to use this range
 The range [0,255] stems from display technologes
For many of the image processing operations in this
lecture grey levels are assumed to be given in the
range [0.0, 1.0]
 What Is Image Enhancement?

Image enhancement is the process of making images

more useful
The reasons for doing this include:
 Highlighting interesting detail in images
 Removing noise from images
 Making images more visually appealing
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Image Enhancement Examples

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Image Enhancement Examples (cont…)

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Image Enhancement Examples (cont…)

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Image Enhancement Examples (cont…)

 Spatial & Frequency Domains

There are two broad categories of image enhancement

techniques
 Spatial domain techniques
 Direct manipulation of image pixels
 Frequency domain techniques
 Manipulation of Fourier transform or wavelet transform of an
image
For the moment we will concentrate on techniques
that operate in the spatial domain
 Image Histograms

The histogram of an image shows us the distribution of

grey levels in the image
Massively useful in image processing, especially in
segmentation
Frequencies

Grey Levels
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Histogram Examples
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Histogram Examples (cont…)

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Histogram Examples (cont…)

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Histogram Examples (cont…)

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Histogram Examples (cont…)

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Histogram Examples (cont…)

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Histogram Examples (cont…)

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Histogram Examples (cont…)

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Histogram Examples (cont…)

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Histogram Examples (cont…)

 Histogram Examples (cont…)

A selection of images and

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

their histograms
Notice the relationships
between the images and
their histograms
Note that the high contrast
image has the most
evenly spaced histogram
 Contrast Stretching

We can fix images that have poor contrast by applying

a pretty simple contrast specification
The interesting part is how do we decide on this
transformation function?
 Histogram Equalisation
Spreading out the frequencies in an image (or
equalising the image) is a simple way to improve
dark or washed out images
The formula for histogram
equalisation is given where
 rk: input intensity
sk  T (rk )
k
  pr ( r j )
 sk: processed intensity
 k: the intensity range
(e.g 0.0 – 1.0) j 1
 nj: the frequency of intensity j
k nj

 n: the sum of all frequencies

j 1 n
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Equalisation Transformation Function

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Equalisation Examples
1
 Equalisation Transformation Functions

The functions used to equalise the images in the

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

previous example
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Equalisation Examples
2
 Equalisation Transformation Functions

The functions used to equalise the images in the

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

previous example
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Equalisation Examples (cont…)

4
3
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Equalisation Examples (cont…)

4
3
 Equalisation Transformation Functions

The functions used to equalise the images in the

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

previous examples
 Summary

We have looked at:

 Different kinds of image enhancement
 Histograms
 Histogram equalisation
Next time we will start to look at point processing and
some neighbourhood operations